Pursuing Discernment - Part 2 - The Line Between Good and Evil: Within My Heart, Not Between Our Groups

As a prisoner in the Stalinst Gulag of Soviet Russia, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn knew something about the consequences of Marxist ideology.  In his masterpiece The Gulag Archipelago, he points out the fallacy of the "class conflict" worldview:

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.

Socrates taught us: "Know thyself."

Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren't.

From good to evil is one quaver, says the proverb. 

From Part I The Prison Industry, Ch. 4 "The Bluecaps" (p168, The Gulag Archipelago, Collins 1974) 

The "problem" my friends is in me, and in everyone of us.  Our various group identities are infected by the brokenness within each of us.  Real change must start inside each person, and that change is the work of the Gospel of God's Grace, not simply the transfer of political power from one group to another.

This is why the matter of character is so important in a gospel-centered worldview - and so missing in the Marxist perspective where a person's group identity is what matters instead.  If you belong to the "oppressed group" then any "character flaw" is of little concern.  "Being on the right side of history" when seen through "class conflict" eyes means being on the approved side of the conflict as the oppressed overcome the oppressors.  Personal character is of no consequence. 

I’d love to interact with you more on some of these observations, as well as listen to your response.  if you would like to pursue further conversation, then contact me through the church, and let's talk.  I would be anxious to listen and consider, as well as dig deeper with you into my own reading.  Grace Abounding!